1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to fluorescence microscope apparatuses for fluoroscopy of specimens such as biological tissue.
This application is based on Japanese Patent Application No. 2007-104700, the content of which is incorporated herein by reference.
2. Description of Related Art
In the related art, there are known fluorescence observation apparatuses that irradiate a specimen with excitation light, such as laser light, and observe fluorescence emitted from the specimen (for example, see Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, Publication 2006-71544).
To prevent the problem of difficulty in acquiring a clear fluorescence image due to external light mixing with the weak fluorescence from the specimen, the entire fluorescence observation apparatus is covered by a black box for performing fluoroscopy.
However, the black box for fluoroscopy disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, Publication No. 2006-71544 covers the entire fluorescence observation apparatus, resulting in the problem of increased apparatus size. In particular, in microscope apparatuses with a compact main body whose angle can be changed and in which the objective lens can be brought close to the specimen from any direction, even though the microscope main body itself can be reduced in size with some effort, it is necessary to provide a large fluoroscopy black box which covers the entire movable range of the microscope main body, resulting in the problem that it is not possible to reduce the size of the entire system.